Births and Names
by aladyofsarcasm
Summary: Hohenheim had a lot of thoughts the night his first child is born, and then Trisha went and asked him to name the kid.


It was February 3rd, 1899 - barely past, not even one in the morning. The blond-haired man sat against the wall, watching the clock tick away the time. The screaming from the bedroom above his head was almost unbearable.

How ironic. The man with a million screaming souls inside him, torn apart by the sound of a crying woman. His woman. His Trisha. He looked down at his hands, they were stained with ink from a few hours previous when Trisha's cry of "the baby's coming!" had startled him into knocking over his jar of ink.

Hohenheim was over 500 years old, but he couldn't recall ever witnessing in a child birth. Sure, he'd met his fair share of babies as a child but never had he seen a childbirth. Men weren't allowed in the house when a child was born in the Xerxian tradition. And in the years since then, he'd- well, he'd avoided people. Never got close enough to be privy to such private matters.

Something about the thought that a Xerxian child would be born and he, a man, would be present in the house bothered him, and with that realization Hohenheim stood up. Tall and middle-aged, he grunted slightly as he stood, regretting his choice to sit on the floor instead of a chair. But the chairs in the kitchen didn't have a view of the clock.

He made his way over to the front door and slipped outside, closing the door with as soft a click as possible. He resettled himself on the front stoop of the house. Close enough that he could still hear if they called, could still hear his Trisha crying in labour. But no longer inside the house.

He was sure that Pinako, and Trisha, would laugh at him. Especially with the young Urey helping with the birth. Not that Urey was "young" anymore per say, a doctor already. But it suddenly seemed vitally important that when this Xerxian child, even just a half-Xerxian, be given the due respect afforded to every other child of Xerxes who had been born before them.

The man tilted his head back and sighed. He looked up at the stars both so different and similar to the ones that shone over the small mud house he himself had been born in so long ago. So different and similar to the sky that he had spent decades, centuries looking up to asking "why?". Asking for forgiveness. For an end. For something.

He'd never dared to ask for peace. He didn't deserve peace. And this wasn't peace, it was tension and anxiety. Even with his beloved, Hohenheim could not say he had ever truly known peace.

It was cold, even this far south it still got cold in the middle of winter. Not enough for snow usually, but enough that the breeze chilled him, and in the late, early hour, he'd wished he'd thought to grab his jacket.

Hohenheim sat and waited. He couldn't hear the clock from outside. The only indication of passing time was the moon.

Eventually, the door swung inward, and someone stepped out behind him. The sitting man didn't move.

"Hohenheim?" Urey Rockbell grasped the older man by the shoulder.

"Yes?" Hohenheim cleared his throat and looked to the boy, man, over his shoulder. The young man, a doctor, a married man, a soon-to-be father in his own right.

"You wanna come up?" It was only now that Hohenheim noted the silence emanating from the doorway.

"Is everything okay?" He scrambled to stand up, his feet slipping on the worn stone steps of his beloved's family home.

Urey grinned and helped him stand. "Of course. You'd better go introduce yourself to your son though."

"A- s. A son?" Hohenheim felt his mind go blank for a moment. "I have a son?"

"Yep. Six, maybe seven pounds of healthy baby boy." Urey finally began to push the stunned man into the house.

A son. A Son! His hands felt like they were shaking so hard they'd fall off his wrists. The words tumbled around the man's head. An endless litany that managed to block out the endless torrent of souls. Or did it quiet them? Hohenheim began to stumble up the stairs.

"Urey! Where is that damned man?" Pinako stuck her head over the railing to quietly call to her son. "Oh, there you are."

She walked with Hohenheim over to the slightly ajar bedroom door. "Thought we were going to have to arrange a search party for you." The old woman said in her dry voice.

The man didn't respond. Focused too intently on the sliver of light that escaped the room and glowed in the dim of the dark hallway.

"Looks like we might still have to do that if you don't get out of that head of yours." Pinako sighed to herself and gave the man a hard slap on the back, knocking him towards the door.

Hohenheim's hand collided with the door, the expanding light finally knocking him out of his own head. He could hear Trisha and Sarah talking in quiet voices from the other side of the door.

He hesitated.

"You know," Pinako pulled her pipe from her apron pocket and stuck it unlit in her mouth. "You gotta go in there eventually."

"I know." He breathed.

"You'd best get it over with then." His best friend grinned at his back. "Won't do anyone any good sitting out here with your thumb up your ass being nervous."

"I know," he repeated. "But what if-"

"For God's sakes Hohenheim! Get your ass in that door and go meet your child and kiss your wife!"

"Right." He stepped through the door and into the blinding light of the room.

"There he is: the proud father." Sara Rockbell, Urey's wife and a doctor herself, smiled at him as she straightened herself and rubbed her swollen belly gently as he entered the room. She picked up a pitcher on the bedside table. "I'll go refill this. Let the three of you get acquainted."

The brunette woman patted Trisha on the arm lightly and left the room, closing the door silently behind her.

Hohenheim stared at nothing, his eyes unseeing as he stared ahead of him. The room, their room, smelled like blood and disinfectant, it was salty like sweat and hot. There was a pile of blankets and towels at the foot of the bed, he decided to focus on that. But the sight of the blood on the blankets made his stomach flipflop and he turned away.

He felt like he shouldn't be allowed here. Millions of souls cried out in anguish in an unending storm of pain only he could hear. A child of Xerxes had been born. Hohenheim felt that he was sure to ruin the child the same way he had ruined the ancestral homeland the boy would never know. Would contaminate the child the way he corrupted and contaminated everything he touched.

"Hohenheim?" Trisha sounded exhausted and he finally looked up to take in her face. Fatigue cling to the edges of her face and body, but she smiled at him so brightly he thought he would happily spend eternity existing off nothing but it.

"Come on, Silly. Get over here." She waved a hand at him gently, careful not to rustle the bundle of blankets in her arms.

The ancient man fixed his gaze on the bundle and moved towards his love stiffly. Trisha patted the bed beside her and gave her love a fond smile, the one she always did when she thought he was being silly.

He dropped to the bed heavily and flinched at his own movements, noting with mild terror the way the old bed creaked and heaved under him in a way he had never noted previously.

"Do you want to hold him?" Trisha clasped his hand and brought it over to the bundle, placing it gently on top of the blankets and tilted her arm to show the baby's face.

It was wrinkled and pink, his eyes were closed.

"I don't know if that's a good idea." Hohenheim pulled his hand back, his gaze not leaving the face of the child, but somehow no longer seeing it. "I don't want to hurt him."

Trisha gave a small sigh and he could envision the eye roll she was giving him. That thought comforted him, brought him back to the reality in front of him. "There's not that much to holding a baby. Here, lean back."

She nudged him with her elbow, so he was leaning against the headboard. "You just cradle him in the crook of your arm like I'm doing. And support his bum with your other hand if you're standing."

His love slowly slipped the sleeping baby into his lap and arranged his arms around the small bundle. The baby squirmed as he was moved, his lips puckering like he'd bitten into a lemon and eyes squishing further shut.

The baby settled again and yawned, his eyes opening to look at Hohenheim.

His eyes were pale, the iris almost as pale as the surrounding white. To anyone else Hohenheim imagined that it would be disconcerting. He felt a rush of emotion swell within him at the sight.

Everything suddenly felt real in a way he couldn't describe. Hohenheim began to cry, he had a son. A son! A baby boy with the pale eyes of a Xerxian baby. He could already see it, his son's future, a boy with golden eyes and perhaps Trisha's warm brown hair. Or gold. A golden child of Xerxes.

He knew the mechanics of it, Trisha had been pregnant, she had a baby. His baby. Hohenheim never doubted that it was his child.

But it hadn't felt real. Not like this. Holding her hand through the early contractions while waiting for the Rockbell's to arrive, going outside to await the birth. They were like stage directions in a play he didn't feel adequate enough to participate in.

He felt even more inadequate now. More ruinous. Like a curse. A curse clutching to one of the only remaining pieces of Xerxes that wasn't already tainted by him.

"We never really talked about names." Trisha leaned against him, a gentle guide away from his thoughts.

"I'm sorry. I should've paid more attention I was-" Hohenheim coughed out between tears. Suddenly aware of how he hadn't been there during her pregnancy, so unreal and foreign to him he'd unintentionally ignored it.

"You paid plenty of attention to me." Trisha kissed his shoulder, unable to reach his face.

The trio sat in silence for a while. Trisha and the baby dozed quietly while Hohenheim took in his son's face. Endlessly fascinating in a way that only alchemy and Trisha herself had previously captivated him. He barely noticed Sara returning with the water pitcher and collecting the blankets and towels from the foot of the bed.

"He's still going to need a name. Did you have any ideas?" Trisha finally spoke up again when they were alone once more.

"He'll have your name. I can't- I don't want him to have mine."

He felt Trisha smile against his arm. "He's still going to need a first name. He can't stay Baby Elric forever." She prompted again.

"Are there any names you like?" He wanted to keep his curse as far away as possible.

"Not particularly." Trisha said with a tilt of her head. "I want you to name him. He's your son too. I'm giving him my name, you should give him a name too."

He looked at her curiously. Trisha Elric always had a way of looking at things and breaking them down into the simplest terms.

Things didn't need to be complicated to her, if they were, she made them simple. Though he'd never agree with the sentiment, she'd always thought of herself as a simple village girl. Simple village girls don't get caught up in complicated things. By her reasoning; if they did get caught up in them, well the things weren't actually that complicated in the first place.

When she said it like that, so simplistic, it made sense. He was their son, they had created him together (though Trisha did significantly more work regarding the creation), and they would name him together. Raise him together, love him together, make him happy together.

Hohenheim thought back through the centuries but quickly discarded all of the names he thought of. He didn't want his son named after someone. He wanted his son to have his own name. He wanted his son named for something. The options were both limited and vast. Overwhelming. Terrifying. Did he even have the nerve to give his son a name?

"Edward." He finally said. "Edward Xerxes Elric."

The rich guard of Xerxes.

One of the last true Xerxians alive. Perhaps the irony of it all is what made the name fit.

His son would be strong and true, like his mother. Smart and proud, but not prideful like his father. Not his father's redemption; but the last unintentional guardian of a half-forgotten past. Of a country, a people that were no more.

"I think he likes it." Trisha leaned forward and kissed the baby, Edward, on the forehead. The slight pressure made the baby squirm and reawaken. He began to fuss and squished his face as if about to cry.

"He didn't move, he doesn't even know what his name is. He wasn't even awake. He can't even understand us."

Trisha leaned back against the pillows behind her and gestured for Hohenheim to hand her the baby. "Maybe. But I think it suits him. He'll look exactly like you."

"How can you possibly tell?" Hohenheim gently handed the baby, Edward, back to Trisha.

"Mothers just know these things." Trisha teased lightly as she took the crying baby and maneuvered him towards her breast. Hohenheim watched in fascination as the baby latched into her nipple. A warm silence fell over them, each lost to their own thoughts.

The ancient man frowned, considering his choice of name for his son. Considering what he would have to tell his son. "What do I tell him? How do I tell him?"

"Whatever you want to tell him. Tell him what you told me."

"Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe just Edward." Hohenheim hesitated. Nothing was official until the announcement.

"How will he know he's in trouble if I don't have a middle name to yell at him?" Trisha quirked her head to the side and smiled. At his worried face she looked back down to her son, more serious. "I think it suits him. He is half Xerxian. Shouldn't he have some claim to his heritage?"

They fell silent again, each captivated by the small child their love had produced.

"What if he hates it?" What if he hates me?

"I don't think he will." Trisha rearranged how she was holding Edward when the boy unlatched himself from her. "Edward is a good name, and Xerxes is the home of his father. No son of ours could hate something as special as his own name."

The boy was still awake and now was gazing up at his mother happily. "Edward? Why don't you go tell your father how much you love him." She handed the baby back to Hohenheim.

"He can't actually tell me anything." He looked at the baby, at Edward, warily, then took in Trisha's tired form. He stood up carefully, remembering to support Edward's bum as he did so.

"Yes, he can. In his own way." Trisha laid down fully and sighed deeply.

Hohenheim looked back to his son, who was looking at him with wide pale eyes that Hohenheim could've sworn already looked more gold then they had barely an hour earlier. Though he knew such a thing wasn't possible. When he looked back up to his beloved she was already asleep.

Hohenheim lowered the light of the lantern that was on the bedside table and carried Edward to the bedroom door. He carefully opened it, trying to be both quiet and not jostle the baby he cradled in his arms.

Once out in the hallway Hohenheim carried his son over to the window at the end of the hallway.

The two stared at each other for a while.

"Well Edward, what do you think of your name?" The new father finally said.

Edward blinked up at Hohenheim who sighed in turn. He thought back to what Trisha had said.

He didn't want to tell his son what he told Trisha.

He wanted his son to know the world. To know everything.

He was selfish.

He wanted to hear his son speak his own tongue. To not just look like a child of Xerxes. But to read the letters he wrote; write the language he had taught himself so long ago as a slave.

He spoke softly and finally smiled at his son. His voice a low rumble that came more from his chest than his mouth. Sentences he had never dared to think he would ever be allowed to say, spoken in a language all but forgotten.

_It is a new day, my son. Welcome. And I will show you the world._

This was part of a larger work (that hope to eventually post) that I ended up having to cut out bc it just didn't fit quite right but I was too in love with it to throw away. I think it works pretty good as a one-shot.

This is my fourth piece that I've posted since I got back into writing about a year ago and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been so positive and supportive! (even tho its been over a year since I last posted)


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